We counted up the cowslips on a very sunny Saturday 1 June – we being me, Barbara, Helen and Dieter assisted by Lucy the dog – and we found around 450 flowers setting seed. See here for what they look like : http://www.wildlifebcn.org/species/cowslip

About two-thirds of these are on the small orchid meadow mowed in the autumn by the Wildlife Trust volunteers and the other third on the meadow mowed in July just before the folk festival camping. There are probably more on the camping field, scattered in the high grass. Interestingly although there were around a hundred rosettes of leaves on the southern side, none of these had surviving flowers and many were very small and grazed. There are none anywhere else on the entire remaining grazed common – but prove me wrong if you can.

What the research shows is that early grazing is very bad for cowslips, causing serious long-term declines, but that autumn cutting is an excellent choice with summer cutting someway behind. This fits exactly with where the surviving cowslips are on the common with most on the autumn cut areas.

This seems very positive evidence that not only is management of parts of Coldham’s Common possible without grazing, but that the present grazing management ( putting too many cows on too early ) is probably causing a long-term decline in those emblematic species that we treasure so much.